Boswell's Transformation Season at the Ustinov is announced

The Ustinov Studio’s Transformation Season opens on 19 September with Julian Mitchell’s The Welsh Boy, a “lusty 18th century tale of youthful passion”, set in Ross-on-Wye and Bath.
Described as a scintillating rediscovery of one of the hidden gems of eighteenth-century
Literature, The Welsh Boy brings back to life a true story of passionate love and outrageous sexual scandal in the sleepy provincial town of Ross-on -Wye.

Jem Parry is blessed with a wonderful singing voice that has allowed him to escape his humble origins in South Wales. Mary Powell is the richest heiress in the district - also its loveliest, and its most daring. When Mary engages Jem as her music master their lessons at the spinet turn into tutorials in the most heavenly pleasures. But love is one thing, sex another and marriage yet a third.

James Parry published his personal diary under the title The True Anti-Pamela as an act of revenge against Mary Powell. He saw their torrid affair as a direct inversion of Samuel Richardson's contemporary best-seller, Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded, with himself in the role of lowly-born innocent and his lover the aristocratic villain of the piece.

The Welsh Boy reunites the team that created the critically acclaimed adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier at the Ustinov Studio in 2010.

Jem Parry is played by Sion Daniel Young (The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning and House of America, National Theatre of Wales); Mary Powell played by Peta Cornish (The Great Gatsby,King'sHead Theatre; Pandora’s Box, Barbican Curiosity Festival; Fallujah, Jerwood Space) and Elizabeth Powell played by Geraldine Alexander (For Once, Hampstead Theatre; In Praise of Love, Royal and Derngate). Ed Birch and Rhiannon Oliver complete the cast.

Over the summer of the Silver Jubilee in the heart of the English countryside four boys are playing war games and preparing for an attack from the Ruskies. But what starts off as innocent fun begins to turn nasty after the death of one of the gang members. As the boys plan their revenge on the adults they hold responsible, the extent of their vindictiveness becomes truly terrifying.

Toby Litt’s black comedy received rave reviews when it was first published in 2001, and is now brought to the stage for the first time ever in a fast-paced, highly imaginative piece of theatre.

Gary Sefton’s recent directing credits include the five-star production of Diary Of A Nobody (Royal & Derngate) and the award-winning Diva In Me (Brighton Festival 2010).

deadkidsongs promises to take you on an exhilarating and shocking journey into the savage heart of boyhood.

Imagine waking up one morning and finding that another person - an exact replica of you - has hijacked your body, and, posing as you, infiltrates your friendships, gatecrashes parties, humiliates waiters, behaves disgracefully and generally wreaks havoc! Everyone believes this imposter is you and yet in every aspect of his personality he is the sort of person you would abhor. This is the horror that faces Mr Golyadkin, a mild-mannered government clerk, when he
awakes one morning in St Petersburg and realises that his world has been turned upside down.

Laurence Boswell’s, production credits include The Phoenix of Madrid, Iphigenia (which was translated by Meredith Oakes), The Surprise of Love and In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play. This bold new adaptation of Dostoevsky’s brilliant, hilarious and intriguing novella will be filled with special effects and accompanied by nineteenth century music and dance.

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